‘I’m here because of Sleepy Joe’: Trump says China wants Biden badly, declares Sanders 'history'

US President Donald Trump has declared Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential bid “history,” and slated the former vice president, Joe Biden, as election competition heats up.

“Looks like Bernie Sanders is history,” Trump tweeted on Monday. “Sleepy Joe Biden is pulling ahead and think about it, I’m only here because of Sleepy Joe and the man who took him off the 1% trash heap, President O! China wants Sleepy Joe BADLY!”

Trump’s declaration came after successive New York Times articles pilloried Sanders for a trip to the Soviet Union in 1988, undertaken when the socialist senator was mayor of Burlington, Vermont. The Times also blasted Sanders for criticizing the Reagan government’s support for right-wing regimes and groups in Latin America in the 1980s. An article published on Saturday led with a quote from Sanders stating how he “did my best to stop American foreign policy” at the time.

However, before the Times brought Sanders’ past into the spotlight, Biden had been pulling ahead of the progressive senator in several polls. Propelled by friendly coverage in the mainstream media, Biden trumpeted a return to Hillary Clinton-style centrism, eschewing the leftward lurch of the Democratic party of late.

Pitching himself as a uniter, Biden told a rally in Philadelphia on Saturday that “this nation needs to come together,” urging the electorate to “stop fighting and start fixing.”

Entering the race just over a month ago, Biden initially focused all of his energy on opposition to Trump, rather than his own policies. His first campaign video was a sermon on how Trump was tarnishing “the core values of this nation,” and repeated the long-debunked idea that Trump once called neo-nazi marchers in Virginia “very fine people.”

Trump has shot back at Biden several times since the former VP kicked off his campaign, dubbing his Democratic challenger “SleepyCreepy Joe” and posting fan-made memes mocking Biden for groping women at Washington events. Amid an escalating trade war with China, Trump has also accused Biden of letting Beijing “get away with cheating while he was Vice President.”

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